Marlee Matlin selling home after being hit with tax bill

Reuters Staff

2 Min Read

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actress Marlee Matlin says she is selling her Los Angeles-area house and taking her four children out of private school to ease a cash crunch that has left her owing $50,000 in back taxes.

Matlin, 45, told People magazine that she was working out a payment schedule with the Internal Revenue Service to settle her tax bill from the 2009 fiscal year.

She said she and her husband, a police officer in the Los Angeles municipality of Burbank, "have always made ends meet in the past -- and we will in this circumstance as well." Her spokeswoman confirmed the details of the news report.

In this case, the couple are seeking $899,000 for their modest, five-bedroom, 2,600-square-feet (243-square-meter) home in the suburb of Pasadena, according to a Reuters search of public records.

Matlin told People that the family planned to move to a suburb with a good public school. As a middle-class working actor without a steady paycheck, Matlin said she and her family do not live an extravagant lifestyle.

Nor did her tax woes mean she was "a bad person," she told People. "It's reality. It's the reality that a lot of people in America are facing."

Matlin, perhaps the best known deaf actress in Hollywood, is a contestant in the current season of "Celebrity Apprentice."

She won an Academy Award in 1987 for her lead role in "Children of a Lesser God," and made Emmy-nominated guest appearances in episodes of "Seinfeld," "Picket Fences" and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit."